1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium and a printed matter producing method used in a printed matter producing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printed matter producing apparatus which forms a desired print on the basis of print data transmitted from an operation terminal and produces a plurality of printed matters is already known. In this prior art, a plurality of pieces of print data corresponding to a plurality of printed matters, respectively, is transmitted from an operation terminal (print server computer) to a printed matter producing apparatus (digital copying machine) via network communication. The received print data is stored once in storage device (memory) of the printed matter producing apparatus and then, read, and printing device (printer engine) forms the print corresponding to the print data on a print-receiving medium (manuscript).
In the operation, wireless data communication might be disconnected in the middle of transmission of the plurality of pieces of print data for some reasons (hereinafter referred to as communication error as appropriate). If all the plurality of pieces of print data is retransmitted after occurrence of this communication error, even if a part of a printed matter has been already produced by the print data having been normally transmitted before occurrence of the error, all the plurality of printed matters including the part of the printed matter is produced. As a result, the part of the printed matter is produced in duplication, which is a waste.
In response to the above, in the prior art, when a plurality of pieces of print data is to be transmitted to the printed matter producing apparatus for production of a plurality of printed matters as above, the plurality of pieces of print data is divided and grouped into a plurality of print data groups in accordance with storage capacity of the storage device. Then, by sequentially transmitting each of the plurality of print data groups as a printing instruction (print job), if a communication error occurs in the middle of the communication of any of the printing instructions, only printing instructions after the relevant printing instruction will be retransmitted. As a result, the above described waste of duplicated production of the part of printed matter is avoided.
However, in the prior art, when the plurality of pieces of print data is divided and grouped into a plurality of print data groups, there is no particular description on a specific method of sorting in grouping the print data. Usually, the plurality of pieces of print data is generated and arranged according to an order in which a plurality of printed matters is actually produced. Therefore, if grouping is made by simply sorting the data in this aligned order from that with the earlier order so as to be contained in the storage capacity of the storage device, the plurality of pieces of print data which could be combined and grouped into one print data group might be incorporated in separate print data groups, which makes the number of print data groups larger than necessary. Since a print forming operation in the printed matter producing apparatus starts and ends for each print data group, if the number of print data groups becomes excessive as above, the number of times of operation start/operation end becomes large, and continuity of a printed matter producing operation might deteriorate. In the prior art, no particular consideration is given to that point.